The vibecoders are becoming sentient
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Nah I'm on that guy's side. His experience lines up with my own, namely that vibe coding is not useful for people who don't know how to program, but it can be useful for people who do know how to program, and simply aren't familiar with the specific syntax used in a language they're not an expert in.
In that case, the queries to the AI model aren't, "write me a program that can do X", it's more like "write me a function in this language that can take A, B, and C as inputs, do operation Y with them, and return Z", or "what's the best way to find all of the unique elements in an array and sort it alphabetically in this language". Then the programmer can take those pieces and build up a proper application with them. The AI isn't actually writing the program for you, it's more like a customized Stack Overflow generator, without having to wade through a decade of people arguing back and forth in the comments about inane bullshit.
Does it save a ton of time? No, but it's still helpful, and can get you up and running in a new language much faster than the alternative.
Sure, it can be useful for people who do know how to program, though I find it usually takes more effort to get it to create what I want and make sure it works than it takes to just do it myself.
This guy explicitly says he doesn't know how to program though. He says he took an HTML (not a programming language, a markdown language) class a decade ago. He probably doesn't remember shit from it, not that it'd be helpful anyway because writing HTML has nothing to do with writing a program to perform a task.
Does it save a ton of time? No, but it's still helpful, and can get you up and running in a new language much faster than the alternative.
You obviously aren't a programmer. You either know how to program or you don't. The language is just syntax, which is trivial to learn. It doesn't help you get running in a new language because you still need to learn the syntax to make sure it's writing something reasonable. That time has to be spent no matter what.
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Back in my day, we called that pseudocode. It's code-like, but not in any actual programming language that you could compile from.
It's more of a set of ideas of how to accomplish something, than it is actually coding.
The fun part is, that pseudo code can be adapted to any actual programming language.
Idk why everyone is crazy about vibes all of a sudden.... But sure.
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Oh man, I love ChatGPT for one thing in particular: "Hey chatbot, is there some library or standard library function for that very specific, yet still kinda generic thing I'm trying to do, so that I don't have to write it myself?"
It does frequently give a helpful answer. That is, it doesn't give me working code, but a helpful pointer to some manual where I can find good instructions for how to use the thing to solve my problem.
I will usually google that kind of thing first (to save the rainforests)... Often I can find something that way, otherwise I might try an LLM
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Vibe coding is useful for super basic bash scripting and that's about it. Even that it will mess up but usually in a suler easily fixed way
I've also found it useful for simple Python scripts when I need to analyze data. I don't use pandas/scipy/numpy/matplotlib enough to remember the syntax and library functions. With vibe coding it, I can have a script in minutes for reading a csv with weird timestamps, scale some of the channels, filter out noise or detrending, perform a Fourier transform, and do a curve fit towards a model.
But then obviously I know every intermediate step I want to do.
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I better not watch this, it would make me angry. I hate people who could have hired someone like me for the same or even less money and get a working product. But no, they always throw money at fraudsters. Because wasting resources is their very nature.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I watched a bit out of curiosity and even vibe-coding aside, he is annoying as fuck. Couldn't stand him 20 seconds.
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A buddy of mine is into vibe coding, but he actually does know how to code as well. He will reiterate through the code with the llm until he thinks it will work. I can believe it saves time, but you still have to know what you are doing.
Agree, my spouse and I do the same. You need to know how to code and understand the basic principles otherwise it's a bit like the Chinese room thing where you may or may not operate currently not have no actual clue of what you're doing. You need to be about to see when llms follow their hobby and blow three lines of code unnecessarily out of proportion by adding 60 lines of unneeded shit that opens the door to more bugs.
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Can someone tell me what vibe coding is?
Can someone tell me what vibe coding is?
a term coined 6 months ago for writing software using an LLM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding
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I will usually google that kind of thing first (to save the rainforests)... Often I can find something that way, otherwise I might try an LLM
True that. But I often find that the search engine is not very good at giving me a solution if I don't know the name of a problem and only have my spaghetti thoughts on what the thing is supposed to do, and translating spaghetti thoughts into something a search engine can find is where the chatbot excels.
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A buddy of mine is into vibe coding, but he actually does know how to code as well. He will reiterate through the code with the llm until he thinks it will work. I can believe it saves time, but you still have to know what you are doing.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I do the same, I am not sure if it saves time. Some times not. Other times if it is a task I really don’t want to work on this helps me to get started and break through procreation
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The AI Fix podcast had a piece about how someone let an AI agent do the coding for them but had a disaster because he gave it access to the production database.
Very funny.
https://theaifix.show/61-replit-panics-deletes-1m-project-ai-gets-gold-at-math-olympiad/
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Sure, it can be useful for people who do know how to program, though I find it usually takes more effort to get it to create what I want and make sure it works than it takes to just do it myself.
This guy explicitly says he doesn't know how to program though. He says he took an HTML (not a programming language, a markdown language) class a decade ago. He probably doesn't remember shit from it, not that it'd be helpful anyway because writing HTML has nothing to do with writing a program to perform a task.
Does it save a ton of time? No, but it's still helpful, and can get you up and running in a new language much faster than the alternative.
You obviously aren't a programmer. You either know how to program or you don't. The language is just syntax, which is trivial to learn. It doesn't help you get running in a new language because you still need to learn the syntax to make sure it's writing something reasonable. That time has to be spent no matter what.
you obviously aren't a programmer
Don't be a dick, the example is a perfectly reasonable one, and it's something ppl would've used Rosetta code or learnxiny or stack overflow for in the past.
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I just use it to whip up a mockup, like a GUI with certain usability features. I'm the one who has to work with highly specific, proprietary software and usability is total ass. But it's difficult to put this into words that the dev is willing to read through. So I'd rather show it. But that's about it.
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I do the same, I am not sure if it saves time. Some times not. Other times if it is a task I really don’t want to work on this helps me to get started and break through procreation
Lol, work as your coitus interruptus.
I know you meant procrastination btw.
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Vibe coding is useful for super basic bash scripting and that's about it. Even that it will mess up but usually in a suler easily fixed way
I don't think it has much to do with how "complex or not" it is, but rather how common it is.
It can completely fail on very simple things that are just a bit obscure, so it has too little training data.
And it can do very complex things if there's enough training data on those things.
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Nah I'm on that guy's side. His experience lines up with my own, namely that vibe coding is not useful for people who don't know how to program, but it can be useful for people who do know how to program, and simply aren't familiar with the specific syntax used in a language they're not an expert in.
In that case, the queries to the AI model aren't, "write me a program that can do X", it's more like "write me a function in this language that can take A, B, and C as inputs, do operation Y with them, and return Z", or "what's the best way to find all of the unique elements in an array and sort it alphabetically in this language". Then the programmer can take those pieces and build up a proper application with them. The AI isn't actually writing the program for you, it's more like a customized Stack Overflow generator, without having to wade through a decade of people arguing back and forth in the comments about inane bullshit.
Does it save a ton of time? No, but it's still helpful, and can get you up and running in a new language much faster than the alternative.
I'm just using AI to get me the damn standard library function I want to use but can't remember. Way faster than clicking through a couple links of a search result for it.
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Like trying to write a book just using auto complete
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Vibe coding tools are very useful when you want to make a tech movie but the
hollywoodcommand just does not cut it. -
Nah I'm on that guy's side. His experience lines up with my own, namely that vibe coding is not useful for people who don't know how to program, but it can be useful for people who do know how to program, and simply aren't familiar with the specific syntax used in a language they're not an expert in.
In that case, the queries to the AI model aren't, "write me a program that can do X", it's more like "write me a function in this language that can take A, B, and C as inputs, do operation Y with them, and return Z", or "what's the best way to find all of the unique elements in an array and sort it alphabetically in this language". Then the programmer can take those pieces and build up a proper application with them. The AI isn't actually writing the program for you, it's more like a customized Stack Overflow generator, without having to wade through a decade of people arguing back and forth in the comments about inane bullshit.
Does it save a ton of time? No, but it's still helpful, and can get you up and running in a new language much faster than the alternative.
I really like the description of AI coding as 'custom stack overflow generator' because it really sells the flaws as well, to an experienced dev. We go to stack overflow for help with some weird quirk of a language or find an obscure library that solves our specific need.
I think vibe coding is cobbling together a project from a bunch of stack overflow posts -- and they only use the question part of the post.
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Vibe coding is useful for super basic bash scripting and that's about it. Even that it will mess up but usually in a suler easily fixed way
When I want to be lazy and make some simple excel macros is about the most iv trusted it with that it manages to do with out fucking up and taking more time then just doing it my self.
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I don't want to dismiss your point overall, but I see that example so often and it irks me so much.
Unit tests are your specification. So, 1) ideally you should write the specification before you implement the functionality. But also, 2) this is the one part where you really should be putting in your critical thinking to work out what the code needs to be doing.
An AI chatbot or autocomplete can aid you in putting down some of the boilerplate to have the specification automatically checked against the implementation. Or you could try to formulate the specification in plaintext and have an AI translate it into code. But an AI without knowledge of the context nor critical thinking cannot write the specification for you.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Unit tests become the specification once they are written. ChatGPT can easily write unit tests from whatever your specification is before that -- such as documentation, a bunch of comments and stubs, or even a first draft of the function itself, given enough context from the rest of the project.
Unit tests are too klunky to think in. You don't prototype the specification by implementing unit tests. And you really only lay down a few critical paths even if you "write the tests first" because code paths always come up during implementation that demand more test coverage anyway.
